16 Quotes by D. Michael Abrashoff

The achievement in my life of which I am the most proud was turning that crew into a tight-knit, smoothly functioning team that boasted – accurately – that Benfold was the best damn ship in the Navy.

If your bosses see you lifting burdens off their shoulders, and they find out they can trust you, they stay out of your face. And that gives you the freedom you need to operate independently and improve your ship.

If what I’m about to do appeared on the front page of the Washington Post tomorrow, would I be proud or embarrassed? If.

A Gallup study found that when people leave their companies, 65 percent of them are actually leaving their managers.

Short of those contingencies, the crew was authorized to make their own decisions. Even if the decisions were wrong, I would stand by them. Hopefully, they would learn from their mistakes. And the more responsibility they were given, the more they learned.

The timeless challenge in the real world is to help less-talented people transcend their limitations.

What’s needed now is a dramatic new way of inspiring people to excel while things are happening at lightning speed.